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Hi! I would like to participate in the recital today. I see that many have posted already and have made reviews. Did I miss it? Is it too late?

I have never recorded before. I have webcam on computer to make a recording. I also have midi cables too to attach to laptop. What is the best way to make a recording? How do I submit it? I am sure these things have been asked somewhere but I can not find instructions. Can someone direct me please?

Thank you!

P.S. Big kudos to the latest pianist who has been practicing for 3.5weeks and uploaded theirs. AWESOME!

The recital submissions are due before the 14th of the month every February, May, August, and November, but feel free to find the monthly Piano Bar threads and post your work there for critique or in the Member's Recordings sub-forum you can find through the "Our Most Popular Forums" link at the top of the page.

What a bummer but I see now that ALL OF THIS INFO WAS POSTED!!! Wow I did not see this post. Well, NEXT TIME I will know. In the meantime I will check out Audacity and post what I was going to post in the First Time recordings section. Thank you both.

If it's acoustic or grand piano, a webcam might be enough, though something like Zoom H1 or H4 is preferrable for the sound, which would have to be synced to the video, if you want to submit a video, which you don't have to do. In my opinion, a webcam recording of a performance on an acoustic piano is usually just fine, soundwise, but on many digitals, it's not good enough.

In the case of a digital, most often you can record straight to the piano's memory, and sometimes on a USB memory stick. The format of the file recorded varies, if it's an MP3, you can just upload it to the recitals. If it's in the WAV format, you have to convert it to MP3 in Audacity, VLC media player, or another converting software.

If you are posting in the monthly piano bar, some like to upload to a third party site, like Soundcloud, Box or Dropbox, and post a link to the recording.

If you want to send a video as well, you're left with the problem of synchronizing sound and video, just as in the case of an acoustic piano.

Thank you everybody. I just finished fanangling with everything and now I have my first recording done- FINALLY! LOL. Just in case anyone stumbled upon here and just wants a quick run down of what maybe to do- this was the most helpful resource for me (please go there for details): http://www.pianoclues.com/how-to-record-piano/

But here is a quick run down-(I have a Kawai ES100 digital piano) It does not have outputs except 2 headphone jacks (and midi in and out) so..... I connected one headphone jack from the piano onto the laptops' microphone jack and installed AUDACITY (free) http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ That is what I used to record the song to the computer. I used the other headphone jack on the piano to listen to what I was playing through headphones. The volume on the piano was 1/4 I guess, and the input volume on audacity was .10 and on my computer the volume - mixer- setting for audacity was very low.

When I was done recording the song 50 billion times, I ran the noise removal effect mentioned in the first link (piano clues) and cut the silence in the first and last part of the recording. I saved it in Audacity (just in case). Then I exported it into a .WAV file. Now to make the .WAV file into a .MP3 so that I can post it here (and other places online!!)

I downloaded winLAME recommended by the author in the first link http://winlame.sourceforge.net/download.php From there I uploaded that .WAV and at the click of a button and 10 seconds later it converted it into .MP3

Then I signed up for a free Box account (also recommended)to store my .MP3 song and make it available for all to hear. Listeners do not have to download it first to listen. https://www.box.com/home/

So, in a gist that is what I did today. So... if you haven't recorded anything yet hopefully this helps. Once you get it all set up recording many songs will be a breeze (anything will be after all of this!! haha) I am glad I can now start making a record of my progress so far. Again, go to the first link for detailed info on how to get it all started. (If you are new to this like me!)

I ended up listening to it with either my headphones (but still volume is a bit low) or using an external speaker which I plugged into the laptop.

I ran on AUDACITY- EFFECT-Normalize and it worked (no static this time). I guess after I got all the volume settings just right when I recorded it it was able to do it. So, here is the normalized version here which I will post instead elsewhere- https://app.box.com/s/na3prrw04519tof47eyx

It is louder now that it is normalized- but any advice on how to get it even louder? Thank you!

You play well, I liked it. Thought the later recording had more background hiss or noise. It's possible that my USB soundcard is making some of the noise, there seems to be some background noise in eveything I listen to.

Thank you for checking it out TheodorN ... yes the later recording had the "Normalize" effect on it (through the Audacity program). I still need to tweak the settings when I record the next song. I know the song wasn't perfect, but I am happy the ice is broken :-)

When I was done recording the song 50 billion times, I ran the noise removal effect mentioned in the first link (piano clues) and cut the silence in the first and last part of the recording. I saved it in Audacity (just in case). Then I exported it into a .WAV file. Now to make the .WAV file into a .MP3 so that I can post it here (and other places online!!)

I downloaded winLAME recommended by the author in the first link http://winlame.sourceforge.net/download.php From there I uploaded that .WAV and at the click of a button and 10 seconds later it converted it into .MP3

Yeah, not many of us get a decent recording straight away. For me it can be hours of attempts but I think I am getting better.

I didn't understand why you outputted from Audacity in a wav file and then used winLame. I use Windows 7 with Audacity I can export my recording straight to an mp3 file.

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If this life is a simulation can I not be in the easy version where Bach was a drummer

BTW Let My Words Be is gorgeous very well played. You may have missed the Feb recital but since this is your first submission you should post it here which will in turn resurrect an old thread and perhaps encourage a few more entries.

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If this life is a simulation can I not be in the easy version where Bach was a drummer

earlofmar - audacity does require winlame. But for me, anyway, once I downloaded it audacity knew where it was, and I don't have to do a separate step to use it. So when I choose "export as an mp3" it just does it. Maybe that's the way it's working for you, too.

Cathy

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CathyPractice like you are the worst; play like you are the best - anonymous

And there's a good reason to keep your original recording in .wav form; it's uncompressed and higher quality, and if you ever want to burn your recordings to a CD (I do that every year to keep track of my progress), the resulting CD will have a lot better sound.

And there's a good reason to keep your original recording in .wav form; it's uncompressed and higher quality, and if you ever want to burn your recordings to a CD (I do that every year to keep track of my progress), the resulting CD will have a lot better sound.

I hadn't thought of burning a CD... quite like the idea!

Of course I would like the first one to sound like the 10th or so will....

Really good and very cool idea to keep track of one's progress, thanks!

Therightmoment, I too didn't enter the recital which I now regret. I had no idea of the range of players, and the data everyone tells about themselves and the piece. And I too just started playing in Dec. You have encouraged me to try recording a piece and post it Members Recordings. And btw, you played that piece very nicely!

After my fiasco with the virus the other day I gave up on winLame...but today decided to give it one more shot.

I downloaded and installed winLame as shown from the link above.I have a mp3 file that I have clipped with audacity and run noise cancel on. So now, in audacity, I go to file - export - and now the trouble begins....

after hitting export I get a screen that says "no items match your search" in the main box, and in the bottom box shows "file name" "name of the file I have been working on" and "save as type" "mp3" -- ok so if I then hit the save button on that screen I get a warning that I'm about to export an mp3 file that does not have a .mp3 file extension on it, am I sure I want to. When I hit yes it says I need lame_enc.dll , I click ok and it says "could not open mp3 encoding library"

edit to add: So, my clumsy surmise....I have Audacity, I have winLame, but they ain't talkin to each other. So, obviously I need to do something but I dont' know what. When I open the WinLame folder the only file in it is the Lame start file that launches the program....should I see a folder or file that says lame_encl.dll ???

I haven't found time yet too make a good recording. I have been very busy and everything up till now was sound quality wise to bad (really, no fake excuse). I have to invest in a good recorder and find some time with no one around to do a good recording (baby and kid noises in a recording don't improve it).

Just compared mp3 files of the same recording, one converted in Audacity, the other in FFmpeg. The mp3 made in FFmpeg had considerably less hiss and extra noise. Hitherto I've always encoded in FFmpeg, and in light of this, I'm going to continue doing just that.

Oh we've had much more than that in recital pieces! And we've had visual "noise", too! My favorite was when Mr. FarmGirl crawled across the screen trying to stay out of the way of the camera But seriously, we all deal with stuff like that (well, I go directly from digital to computer) and it's fine. *You* might want a recording of *you* without it, but the rest of the folks in recitals are quite understanding. So don't worry about it very much, eh?

Cathy

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CathyPractice like you are the worst; play like you are the best - anonymous

In general, Audacity is known to have noise issues. Specifically if you record directly into Audacity. I have three different DAWs (Mixcraft, Reaper, Audacity), Audacity recordings provide the least quality.

The following command line for converting a WAV to an MP3, has worked fine for me. Of course the paths will be different on your computer, just make sure to include the full path and filename everytime.